CHAPTER VICRESCENDO
LONG hours she practised on the Chappell grand in the room over Burlington’s Music Emporium. The Concert Study in A flat began to take shape and cohesion. April swept out of its teens into its twenties, and posters appeared on the hoardings outside the Upton Rising Public Hall announcing a “Grand Evening Concert.” Her name was in small blue type immediately above the ticket prices. The rest of the programme was not quite the same as the rough draft that George had sent her. It was curious, but the best-known people had been cut out.... Bernard Hollins, for instance, who had sung at the Queen’s Hall. Those who remained to fill the caste were all people of merely local repute, and Catherine ceased to have misgivings that her performance would be mediocre compared with theirs.
One unfortunate coincidence seemed likely to disturb the success of the evening. In the very afternoon of the same day Razounov, the famous Russian pianist, was playing at the Hippodrome. Razounov did not often come to Bockley, and when he did he drew a large audience. It seemed probable that many who went to hear him in the afternoon would not care for a Grand Evening Concert on top of it....
Already the bills outside the Hippodrome were advertising Razounov in letters two feet high.
The “Grand Evening Concert” was a tame, spiritless affair. Catherine’s pianoforte solo was introduced at the commencement to tide over thatdifficult period during which the local élite (feeling it somewhat beneath their status to appear punctually at the advertised time) were shuffling and fussing into the reserved front seats. Her appearance on the platform was greeted with a few desultory claps. The piano (grand only architecturally) was placed wrongly; the sound-board was not raised, and it appeared to be nobody’s business to raise it for her. She played amidst a jangle of discordant noises: the rustle of paper bags and silk dresses, the clatter of an overturned chair, the sibilant murmur of several score incandescent gas lamps. All through there was the buzz of conversation, and if she looked up from the keyboard she could see the gangways full of late-comers streaming to their seats, standing up to take off their cloaks, making frantic signals to others for whom they had kept seats vacant, passing round bags of sweets, bending down to put their hats under the seat, diving acrobatically into obscure pockets to find coppers for the programme girls, doing anything, in fact, except listen to her playing. Somehow this careless, good-humoured indifference gave her vast confidence. She felt not the least trace of nervousness, and she played perhaps better than she had ever done before. She had even time to think of subsidiary matters. A naked incandescent light lit up the keyboard from the side nearest the rear of the platform, and she deliberately tossed her head at such an angle that the red cloud of her hair should lie in the direct line of vision between a large part of the audience and the incandescent light. She knew the effect of that. At intervals, too, she bent her head low to the keyboard for intricate treble eccentricities. She crossed her hands whenever possible, and flung them about with wild abandon. It would be absurd to say she forgot her audience; on the contrary, she was remembering her audience the whole time that she was playing. And during the six or seven minutes that Liszt’s Concert Study in A flat lasted, her mind was registering vague regrets. She regretted that nobody had thought to raise the sound-board for her. She regretted the omission of all those little stylish affectations which in thefirst thrill of appearing on the platform she had forgotten all about. She had not polished her hands with her handkerchief before starting. She had not adjusted the music-stool. She had not pushed back the music-rest as far as it would go. She had not played the chord and arpeggio inversions of A flat major and paused dramatically before beginning the composition of Liszt. All these things she had forgotten. People would think she was an inexperienced player. Anyhow, she made up as well as she could for her initial deficiencies during the progress of the piece. She “swanked,” according to the popular expression. She was very conscious of the effect her hair was or ought to be producing....
As a matter of fact, nobody was either looking at her or listening to her with any particular interest or eagerness.
She was awakened from her egoistic dreams by the half-hearted applause of those people who by divine instinct know when a piece is coming to an end several bars ahead, and start their applause at the last bar but one.... She bowed graciously in front of the piano, and tripped lightly behind the scenes. The applause did not justify an encore.... She had made up her mind as she played the concluding chords of the Concert Study: If I am given an encore, I will do all those things I omitted to do before: I will polish my hands, adjust the stool, push back the music-rest, have the sound-board lifted, run up with arpeggios on the tonic....
But she was not given an encore.
In the artists’ room behind the scenes nobody took much notice of her. Fred Hitchcock, a local tenor with baritone leanings, was giving final frenzied directions to his accompanist, a large-featured female with an excessively low and powdered neck.
“Go slow over that twiddly bit,” he whispered, catching hold of her to lead her on to the platform. “And don’t forget to give me the leading note in the adagio.” His hoarse voice merged into the buzz of sound that came down the corridor leading to the platform.
She overheard a conversation.
“What was that thing that girl played?”
“What girl?”
“The girl with the red hair.”
“Oh, I don’t know—some Liszt thing, I think.”
“Classical?”
“S’pose so ... of course, nobody listens to pianoforte solos nowadays....”
“They’re too common, that’s what it is. Everybody strums on the piano, more or less.”
“I suppose you went to hear Razounov?”
“No, I couldn’t get a seat. The Hippodrome was full of people who went to see him do something eccentric.”
“Did he?”
“No, as it happened. A friend told me he just came on the platform, played like an angel for two hours, and went off again. Of course everybody was greatly disappointed.”
“Naturally....”
“Bockley isn’t a musical suburb. It doesn’t even think it is. Whereas Upton Rising thinks it is and isn’t.... I wish that pianoforte player of ours wouldn’t show so much of her red hair and try to look like a female Beethoven....”
“Oh, shut up—she’s probably somewhere about, she’ll hear you....”
Catherine put on her hat and cloak and went out by the side door. She was not angry, but she was suffering from one of those periodical fits of disillusionment which were the aftermath of her dreaming. She walked out into the Ridgeway, where the gas lamps glowed amongst the sprouting trees. Far away she could hear the clang of trams along the High Road. She passed the corner house where, it seemed now an age ago, she had discovered her soul in the murmur of a grand piano. Swiftly she walked along the tarred asphalt, thinking to reach Gifford Road and have supper. She felt disappointed. The evening had been lacking in that species of adventure it had seemed to promise. She had not seen George Trant. That, she told herself, had nothing to do with it.
Down the Ridgeway a newsboy came running bearing a placard-sheet in front of him.
“Suicide of a Bockley Schoolmaster,” it said. An awful excitement seized her. Eagerly she bought a paper and searched the front page.
It took some moments to discover the announcement. It was only a small paragraph on an inside page: the placard had evidently been printed to stimulate local circulation.
“Mr. Weston,” she read, “of 24, Kitchener Road, Bockley, an elementary school teacher at the Downsland Road Council School ... throat cut....”
She leaned up against the iron railing round a tree. Then, discovering that she was attracting the attention of passers-by, she walked on more swiftly than before. In her excitement she took the opposite direction, towards the Bockley High Street....
Half-way down the Ridgeway she met George Trant. They were both walking excessively fast and in opposite directions: they almost cannoned into each other.
“Just looking for you,” he said, stopping her. He wore evening dress beneath an overcoat. It was peculiar that her eyes should glue themselves upon an ivory solitaire that he wore. She was half dazed.
“Looking for me?” she echoed, vaguely.
“Yes. Thought you’d gone back to your digs. I was coming to fetch you. What I want to say is——” (That was one of his mannerisms of speech. In his letters he had constantly written, “What I want to say is——”) “we’re having a little supper at the Forest Hotel after the concert’s over. Just ourselves—the performers, I mean. Of course you’ll join us.... I didn’t think you’d be running off so early, or I should have mentioned it before....”
She was still staring monotonously at that ivory solitaire of his.
“Well—er—you see ... er....”
“Of course if you’re engaged for somewhere else——”
“No, I’m not engaged for anywhere else.” She paused, as if weighing things in the balance. Then a change came over her. It was as if shewere suddenly electrified. Her eyes lifted and were found shining with peculiar brilliance. Her body, too, which had been tiredly swaying, jerked all at once into challenging rigidity. “All right,” she said, and even in her voice there was a new note, “I’ll come.”
“Good.” He looked a little queerly at this transformation of her. “Then we’ll go now.”
“But it’s not half-past nine yet. The concert won’t be over till after ten.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go to the hotel to fix up arrangements. You’d better come with me.”
“Right.” The promptitude of her reply had something in it of riotous abandon.
“We’ll go by bus to High Wood and walk the rest. It’s sooner....”
Again she acquiesced, this time by a nod that seemed to indicate an eagerness too great to be put into words.
At the corner of the Bockley High Street they took a bus. They occupied the front seat on the top. The night was moonless, but stars were shining over the whole sky. In front and behind stretched the high road with arc lights gleaming like a chain of pearls. She thought of that other evening when she had ridden with Helen along this very road on the top of a crowded tram-car. She remembered how in the passing glare of the arc-lamps she had read the note which George Trant had enclosed for her. She remembered it all as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, though in point of time it seemed to belong to another age. She remembered the purr of the quickly-moving car, the hiss of the trolley-wheel along the overhead wires, the buzz of talk all round her, and the sharp, sickly sensation of reading a few words in spasms and fitting them into their context when the pale light merged into the darkness.
But even while she thought of these things she became greatly joyous. She took off her hat and stuffed it into her pocket (it was of the kind that yields to such treatment). Her hair blew in soft spray about her head and shoulders, and her eyes were wet with the tears that the cool wind brought. She remembered that once he had said “My God! ... yourhair! ...” He might not say it again, but perhaps he would think it.
“I liked your playing,” he said.
“You did?”
“Rather.... I’m not much of a judge, but I can always tell a real musician from a false one. The real musician throws his whole soul into his music....”
“Did I?”
“Yes. I know you did. You played almost unconsciously. I believe you forgot all about your audience. You were just playing for the sheer love of playing....”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Well, you’re wrong, anyway,” She laughed defiantly. “I didn’t forget about my audience a bit: I kept on remembering them the whole time. I kept on thinking: !Did they notice that little bit? ... I polished off that arpeggio rather nicely; I wonder if anybody noticed it....’ And as for throwing my whole soul into my music, I’m not so sure—whether—even—whether——”
“Yes?”
She tossed back her head so that her hair danced like flame. The bus jerked to a standstill.
“Whether I’ve got a soul,” she said very quickly. “Come on, we’re at High Wood.”
They clambered down the steps.
“I’m sure you have,” he said, as he helped her off the conductor’s platform.
“Oh,youdon’t know anything about me,” she snapped, as they entered the footpath through the Forest.
“I believe I know a very great deal about you,” he said quietly.
“Of course you believe so. Well, I don’t mind you telling me.”
He stroked his chin reflectively.
“Well, to begin with,” he said, “you’re passionate.”
She burst into sudden, uncontrollable, crackling laughter. In the empty spaces of the Forest it sounded like musketry.
“I knew you’d say that.... I knew you would. And for the life of me Idon’t know whether you’re right or wrong. Every woman likes to think she’s passionate. And nobody knows whether she’s any more passionate than anybody else.... Pass on to the next point. You may be right or you may be wrong about the last.”
“You’re impulsive—but good-natured.”
“Oh, rather. A kind heart beneath a rough exterior, eh?”
“I’m quite serious.”
“Are you? I’m not.”
She frisked along in front of him, revelling in the rustle of last autumn’s leaves.
“Do you know what I should do if I were serious?” she asked suddenly, when he had caught up to her.
“No.”
She walked a little way in silence, kicking up the dried leaves with her toes.
“What would you do?” he said.
Her voice became fierce. “I should——” she began, and stopped. She walked a few steps as if pondering, then she laughed airily and tossed her head. “I really don’t know what I should do. Only I’m certain of one thing: I shouldn’t be with you here.”
She could almost feel the extent to which her conversation was mystifying him.
Then she became quiet and submissive, nestling like a stray kitten at his side. She took his arm.
“I’m going to lean on you,” she said; “I nearly fell over a tree root just there.”
He looked gratified. For three or four minutes they walked on in silence. He had plenty he wished to say, but as a matter of fact he thought this particular silence, coming when it did, rather impressive, and he was unwilling to curtail it by a remark unworthy of its profundity. He was engaged in thinking of that remark, a remark that should not so much break the silence as guide it into still more profound depths. He had almost decided on what he should say when quickly and without any warning she snatched her arm from his and scampered a few paces ahead.
“Oh, George,” she cried, with an extraordinary mingling of passion and irritation, “do say something! For God’s sake keep up the conversation! We’ve been a quarter of an hour without a word. Say something, anything you like—only I can’t stand this mooning about under the trees saying nothing!”
“You’re in a very extraordinary mood to-night,” he said deliberately. He was genuinely disappointed.
“I am, or I shouldn’t have come with you,” she replied bluntly.
“Do you dislike me, then?” he asked, with a kind of injured dignity.
“Oh no—oh, don’t let’s talk seriously. I tell you I don’t feel serious to-night.”
“Well, you won’t need to be. We’re going to have a very jolly evening.”
“I hope so. That’s why I came. I feel like having a jolly evening.”
The Forest Hotel occupied a fine position on the crest of a thickly-wooded hill overlooking one of the prettiest spots in Epping Forest. A large balcony opened on to the dining-room, which was on the first floor, and Chinese lanterns swung loosely from the ornamental pilasters. As Catherine caught sight of the table, a vista of white and silver and gleaming glass, she clapped her hands ecstatically. She was as a little child in her enthusiasm.
“Oh, fine—fine!” she cried, clutching George once more by the arm.
The table was on the balcony, and inside the dining-room the floor had been cleared, presumably for dancing. A sleek grand piano sprawled across one corner. Catherine rushed up to it and immediately plunged into some rapid, noisy piece. It was a splendid instrument, and the dim light (only the swaying lanterns on the balcony were lit) threw her into rapture. George came to her side, watching in admiration. Watching rather than listening, because, as he had himself admitted, he was no judge of music. And also because the red glow from the swinging lanterns kindled her hair like a puff of wind on smouldering charcoal.
“There!” she cried, triumphant, as she executed something difficult with her left hand. She swung into a dirge-like melody, tired of it seemingly, and broke into energetic ragtime. George felt it was in some way inappropriate to play ragtime at such a moment.
“Let’s come out on to the balcony,” he suggested, “we’ve only got a quarter of an hour or so before the others come.”
“Well, we’ve nothing particular to do, have we?”
“It’s cooler.... Come on....”
They walked through the French windows and sat on the parapet overlooking the gravel courtyard and the blurred panorama of the Forest.
“It ought to be moonlight,” he exclaimed rapturously.
“No, it oughtn’t,” she contradicted. “I’m glad it isn’t. Starlight is much better.”
It was not an encouraging beginning for him.
“Do you mind if I talk to you seriously?” he asked.
She laughed a little unsympathetically.
“Not at all, only I don’t suppose I shall talk to you seriously.”
“Then it’s not much good, is it?” he remarked, crest-fallen.
“No. Much better to talk nonsense. Let’s talk nonsense. Does one eat oysters with a spoon or a fork?”
“I can’t——”
“But I want to know. I noticed we begin with oysters, and I’m not sure what tools to use. Surely you don’t want me to make a fool of myself. Come, tell me, how does one masticate oysters?”
“A fork is customary, I believe.”
“Thank you. That is what I wanted to know.”
There was a pause, during which the distant sound of voices reached them from the dim Forest background.
“They’re just coming,” she said. “They must have come by bus, like we did.”
He ground his heel into the carpet-matting.
“What I want to say——” he started suddenly. “It’s like this. I believe there was a—a sort of—er—misunderstanding between us atone time. Now I’m not prepared to say that I was altogether right. In fact——”
“I don’t remember any misunderstanding. I think I at any rate understood you perfectly. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, to put it bluntly, what happened was——”
“Excuse me. Imustlet them hear the piano as they come out of the Forest. Sorry to cut short our argument, but I don’t feel metaphysical.... What shall I play? Something appropriate.... Suggest something!”
He sat rather gracelessly on the parapet watching her as she skipped over to the piano. The expression on his face was one of bafflement.
“I really don’t——” he called ineffectually.
For answer she began the pianoforte accompaniment of Landon Ronald’s “Down in the Forest.”
A moment later over the fringe of Forest still untraversed came the voice of the soprano singer, clear and tremulous, but not particularly musical. “Down in the Forest something stirred,” she sang, and Catherine laughed as she caught the sound....
About twenty minutes to midnight the tenor singer (with baritone leanings) whispered to George Trant: “I say, ol’ chap. You’d better l’kafter tha’ l’l gaerl of yours.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Wha’ I say. She’s had too much.”
“But really, I don’t think——”
“Two glasses sherry, one hock, three champagne, two port ... I’ve took notice.”
“She’s a bit noisy, I’ll admit.... But she was quite lively enough as we came along. It’s her mood, I think, mostly.”
The party had left the table and split up into groups of twos and threes. Some lingered sentimentally on the balcony; the violinist, who was just a shade fuddled, lay sprawled across a couch with his eyes closed. Catherine was at the piano, making the most extraordinary dinimaginable. Surrounding her were a group of young men in evening dress, singers and comedians and monologuists and what not. George Trant and the tenor singer stood at the French windows, smoking cigars and listening to the sounds that proceeded from the piano.
“We shall have the manager up,” said George, nervously.
“He’ll say we’re damaging the instrument.... I wish she’d quieten down a bit. The whole place must be being kept awake....”
Catherine’s voice, shrill and challenging, pierced the din.
“Impressions of Bockley High Street—nine p.m. Saturday night,” she yelled, and pandemonium raged over the keyboard. It was really quite a creditable piece of musical post-impressionism. But the noise was terrific. Glissandos in the treble, octave chromatics in the bass, terrible futurist chords and bewildering rhythms, all combined to make the performance somewhat painful. Her select audience applauded enthusiastically.
George Trant moved rather nervously towards the piano.
“I shouldn’t make quite so much noise,” he began, but nobody heard him. Catherine was crying out “Marbl’arch, Benk, L’pol Street,” in the approved jargon of the omnibus conductor, and was simultaneously making motor-bus noises on the piano. Everybody was laughing, because the mimicry of her voice was really excellent. George felt himself unable to raise his voice above the din. He paused a moment immediately behind her back and then touched her lightly on the shoulder. She did not heed. He touched her again somewhat more violently than before. She stopped abruptly both her instrumental and vocal effects, and swung round suddenly on the revolving music-stool so as to face him. Her eyes were preternaturally bright.
“Excuse me,” he began, and something in her eyes as she looked up at him made him doubly nervous, “but perhaps it would be better if you didn’t make quite such a noise.... You see, the other people ...” he added vaguely.
There was absolute silence now. The last echo of the piano had diedaway, and the select audience waited rather breathlessly for what might happen.
Catherine rose. There was that greenish-brown glint in her eyes that made fierce harmony with her hair. For a moment she looked at him unflinchingly. There was certainly defiance, perhaps contempt in her eyes.
“Who areyou?” she said, with quiet insolence.
Somebody tittered.
George Trant looked and felt uncomfortable. For answer he turned slowly on his heel and walked away. It seemed on the whole the most dignified thing to do. Catherine flushed fiercely. Like a tigress she bounded to his side and made him stop.
“For God’s sake, don’t sulk!” she cried wildly. “Wake up and say something! Don’t stand there like a stone sphinx! Wake up!”
With a quick leap she sprang upwards and ran her two hands backwards and forwards through his hair. His hair was long and lank and well plastered. After she had finished with it it stood bolt upright on his head like a donkey fringe. Everyone roared with laughter.
During the progress of this operation the interior door had been opened and a man had entered. In the noise and excitement of the mêlée he was not noticed. He was tall, severe-looking and in evening dress. When the excitement subsided they found him standing a little awkwardly on the edge of the scuffle.
Catherine thought he was at least an underwaiter, come to complain of the noise they were making.
He bowed very slightly, and immediately everybody felt sure he was a waiter. Only a professional could have bowed so chillingly.
Catherine, with flushed face and dishevelled hair, leaned against a chair, panting from her exertion.
“I do not wish to interrupt,” began the stranger, and theremighthave been sarcasm in his voice, “but I have been commissioned to deliver a message to Miss Weston. Which is Miss Weston?”
“I am Miss Weston,” gasped Catherine. Then, to everyone’s amazement,she proceeded furiously: “I know it—I know it. You needn’t tell me! I saw it in the papers ... I suppose they’ll say it’s all my fault.... Do they want me? ... if so, I’ll come. I’ll come with you now if you like....”
The stranger raised his eyebrows slightly.
“I have no desire for you to come anywhere with me.... I don’t know what you are talking about, either. My message is contained in this note, and there is no immediate necessity to reply to it.”
Somebody said, rather in the spirit of a heckler at a political meeting: “Who sent it?” The stranger turned and said: “I should think Miss Weston and not I should be asked that.” The questioner subsided ignominiously.
Catherine took the envelope that the stranger offered her. She put it unread into her pocket. The stranger bowed and walked out. Silence.... Then a chatter of conversation.
“Admirer of yours,” said the violinist, thickly, from his couch. Everybody thought he had been asleep.
“Didn’t exactly get you at a good moment,” remarked the tenor singer, flicking away his cigar-ash.
“Looked like an undertaker,” said the soprano.
“Or the ‘salary-doubled-in-a-fortnight’ man in the efficiency advertisements,” put in the monologuist.
Catherine started to arrange her hair.
“I’m going,” she said, and walked towards the balcony (there was no exit that way). Near the French windows she staggered and fell, fortunately upon the cushions of a couch. They all crowded round her. She did not attempt to rise.
“She’s drunk,” muttered the violinist.
“Possibly ...” said George Trant, bending down to her. “Fetch some water. I think she’s fainted....”